Текст книги "The Hidden Man"

Автор книги: David Ellis

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

44

I WOKE UP MONDAY MORNING with heavy eyes. I’d slept only in fits. Part of me had expected Smith’s boys to come after me. Smith, clearly, was considering his next move, and I’d expected that he might move by coming after me in the middle of the night.

I reached for my cell phone and called Pete at the hotel where he was holed up.

“Bored to tears,” he told me.

“Bored is good,” I told him, again.

I showered, got dressed, and went to the garage. I took care in doing so, to the point of peeking beneath the car and into the backseat before getting in.

I backed the car out of my driveway and checked the rearview mirror as I drove to the office. Strange. Traffic was as plentiful as ever but I didn’t sense that anyone was tracking me. Maybe they were getting better at it. Maybe they were sure I’d be heading straight to the office and felt no need to watch me until I arrived there. Maybe.

I had the same feeling when I pulled into the parking garage—nobody following me. I ran through the same calculus, the possibility that I just couldn’t see them. Weird.

When I got to the office, I found a message from Lester Mapp, the ACA prosecuting Sammy. I hadn’t gotten back to him about a possible plea deal, hoping to show strength in my silence. I figured he could wait a little longer. First, I wanted him to know about Kenny Sanders—that I had a positive ID on the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene from Tommy Butcher. I drafted the disclosure to the prosecution, announcing Sanders as a new witness and the ID from Butcher. I also disclosed the new information regarding Archie Novotny—his absence from his guitar lesson on the night of the murder. I had Marie fax the whole thing to Lester Mapp and imagined the look on his face when he received it.

I made a couple more phone calls to the eyewitnesses from the night of the murder—not Tommy Butcher, but the ones the prosecution would call—once again leaving a voice mail for them. I had been officially stiff-armed by these witnesses and needed to pay them a visit myself or go to the judge for some assistance. It occurred to me that Smith might have something to do with their reluctance.

I worked through lunch, reviewing reports, taking notes, beginning the outline of my closing argument at trial. You always start with the closing argument, your wish list of what you want to be able to say at the end of the trial—and then you work backward to make sure that you’ll be able to do so.

At one o’clock, I received another call from Lester Mapp. This time, I took it.

“You must be joking, Counsel,” he said.

“Good day to you, too, sir. I’m just sitting here trying to decide whether I should call Archie Novotny or Ken Sanders first. Who would you choose, if you were me?”

There was a pause, then an unhappy chuckle from the prosecutor. “The convenient Negro rears his head. I suspect you’ll be shooting for an all-white jury, too? I’m moving to bar. This guy shows up a year after the murder with a story about an African American suspect, and then lo and behold, you find that guy, too?”

It sounded like Lester Mapp wasn’t having a good day.

“This Thursday,” he said. “I got a two o’clock from the judge. I’ll have a motion to bar on file by tomorrow. I’ll send you some fun information on Mr. Butcher, too. Your star witness isn’t such a star.”

That didn’t sound so good, but I didn’t want to let on to being concerned.

“Two o’clock, this Thursday,” he said. “You’ll have my motion to bar by tomorrow.”

“I’ll count the hours.”

I put in a call to Tommy Butcher’s office at Butcher Construction. I left a message with the date and time for this coming Thursday. I’d already warned him of this possibility. The prosecution was right to take a free shot before trial to exclude the testimony—before the jury could hear Tommy Butcher identify Ken Sanders. I was sure that Lester Mapp would put Butcher through the paces. I reached for the phone to call Kenny Sanders, to notify him of the same thing, when the intercom buzzed.

“Detective DePrizio?” Marie said.

I took a breath and punched the button. “This is Jason Kolarich.”

“Denny DePrizio. Got some bad news for you, Counselor.”

In the background noise behind DePrizio, I heard sounds of automobile traffic, a horn honking, an engine revving. DePrizio was calling from a pay phone somewhere. I didn’t think there were any pay phones these days.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”

“Nothing, my friend. The briefcase, the money—all clean.”

“Dammit.”

“Y’know, if what you’re telling me is on the up-and-up, then these guys would be too smart to leave a print, anyway. Right?”

I sighed. “I guess so. It was a shot in the dark, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, listen. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being bullshitted here. And I don’t like being bullshitted.”

DePrizio was pretty good at this. He actually sounded like a good cop trying to look into something for me.

“It’s not—I’m not—” I let out a low moan. “I guess I can’t really expect you to believe me.”

A long pause. “Well, listen—you show me something, I’ll look at it. I’m not too interested in wild-goose chases, right? But you give me something real, I’ll look at it. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough. Shit.”

“In the meantime, I got a briefcase with ten thousand bucks?”

“Give it to charity,” I said. “I don’t want that guy’s money.”

He laughed. “You gotta take this money back, Mr. Kolarich.”

“How about I get back to you on that? I’m tied up for the next couple of days. I need to be careful about meeting with you.”

“Still the black helicopters following you?” He was pretty clear on his opinion of my paranoia. “Call me,” he said, laughing.

“I will,” I said. “And when I do, I’ll have something tangible for you.”

I left the office and went to my car. I needed to talk to those eyewitnesses the prosecution had identified and I was done waiting for them to return my calls.

I was on my way to the highway when my cell phone buzzed, a single bleep, indicating a text message. I picked up the phone and watched the graphic on the screen, the back of an envelope appearing, within which the words, “Message from Pete.”

I hit the “read” button and read the words of the text message:

J: I have to get out of town. I feel like I’m trapped. I’ll never beat the charges and I can’t go to prison. I am not cut out for it. I hope you understand. I can’t tell you where I’m going but I will try to get in touch with you soon. I’m sorry. Pete

I struggled to keep my focus on the road, reading and rereading the message. I clicked it off and dialed Pete’s cell phone. Wherever he was, he had his cell phone close.

“Answer the phone!” I yelled. The call rang into voice mail. I hung up and typed a text message of my own, in reply to him: “Tell me where you are.”

I hit “send” as I sped down the highway. I held the cell phone in front of me, in the event Pete would respond with another text. The text message was optimal from the sender’s perspective because it avoided a conversation. And it was anonymous. It didn’t have to be Pete making the communication. It was just Pete’s phone.

I called the number of the hotel where he was staying, asked for his room, and got nothing but a half-dozen rings and then a voice mail. “Dammit,” I said into the phone. I redialed the hotel and this time asked for any information on Pete Kolarich. The front desk had nothing in the system to indicate that Pete had checked out.

But I knew that he had.

45

I DROVE TO THE HOTEL, with the dawning realization that Pete wouldn’t be there, that I had made a fundamental mistake, that Smith’s goons could have found him any number of ways, including the same way I found Pete’s supplier, J.D.—by triangulating his cell phone calls.

They even had a plausible cover for the abduction. Pete was facing a stiff prison sentence, and the text message made sense on a superficial level. He was running. He couldn’t handle prison. Hell, I’d made it easy for them. Pete had taken a leave from his job and he was hiding in a hotel, having cut off contact with everyone. He had already isolated himself. Nobody would wonder where he was, why he hadn’t shown up for work. Nobody would notice his absence.

I had underestimated Smith. I had miscalculated his desperation. I had backed Smith and his friends into a corner, and now they had my brother. They had taken a step that was irreversible. Until now, they could remain fairly anonymous, working behind the scenes to frame my brother on drug and gun charges. And they could reverse it. The same people who helped frame my brother could recant, or disappear. But abducting Pete? There was no retreating from that.

I’d long suspected that once Sammy’s trial was over, Pete and I would have bull’s-eyes on our chests. Smith and company would come after us. I’d hoped to wrap up everything before then to prevent it from happening.

But now they’d taken the first step down that road. They had my brother, and they’d use him for leverage against me—to drop the motion for DNA testing, to follow their game plan for the trial, to do whatever they wanted—but they’d never let Pete go now.

I left the hotel, having talked the management into letting me look briefly in his room, confirming, by the presence of his suitcase, his toiletries, that Pete had not willingly checked out of the hotel.

My body went cold. I drove in silence back to my office, where I expected to receive the call. I knew Smith would freeze me for a while, let my fear and imagination get the better of me. I turned to the stack of files in the corner of my office, devoted to the investigation into Audrey Cutler from way back when. If there had been any doubt that Smith’s mysterious client had murdered Audrey and those other girls, there wasn’t anymore.

I read through everything I could in the file, forcing out images of Pete and what they might be doing to him. When my intercom buzzed, I jumped from my seated position on the floor, revealing the extent of my nerves.

“Mr. Smith for you on 4407.”

I punched the button and didn’t speak.

“Your brother’s alive,” Smith said. “Whether he stays that way is up to you.”

I didn’t answer.

“Drop that motion. Forget about DNA testing or delays. Use the guy we gave you—Sanders—and stick to the goddamn script.”

I took a deep breath, then another, before answering, the same answer I gave to Father Ben recently. “Or what?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘or what?’ You know what.”

“My brother might as well be dead already. You’ll never let him go.”

“You have to trust that we will,” he said. “What’s the alternative?”

I could do this. If there was one thing I learned from my childhood, it was how to act tough when I was scared. This guy had my brother and me by the balls, but I could keep my voice strong, I could play the hard-ass. I had no other choice.

“The alternative is that I make you pay, Smith, starting tomorrow. The judge is going to allow my request for DNA testing. We both know that.”

He paused. I had him thinking.

“Let Pete go right now,” I said, “and I drop that DNA request. It’s your only option.”

“Hey, asshole, I’m the one with the options. You know what I have to do to keep my guys from tearing your brother from limb to limb right now? They want to take a razor blade to the guy.”

I closed my eyes, shutting out the images. I felt like I was spinning out of control, full-throttle panic, just at the time that I had to retain control. My body began to shake uncontrollably. My brother was in their hands, and there was nothing I could do. I wanted to capitulate right there, cry uncle, offer to drop the DNA and go along with whatever they wanted, as long as they let Pete go. But what I had said to Smith was true—they’d never let him go. Not now. My game of poker had backfired.

“They’re telling me, starting tomorrow, it’s one finger a day, every day, until they’re satisfied that you’ve fallen in line. I can’t stop this, Jason. Only you can.”

Time passed, what felt like an hour, though it was only a matter of minutes. We were both silent, save for our labored breathing. I wasn’t the only one who was scared. I could hear it in Smith’s voice. We’d taken this game too far, beyond the point of return. Neither of us was having fun.

“Okay, Smith, this is a one-time-only offer,” I said. “Are you listening?”

I knew that he was. He was a wounded animal, just like me. No matter how much he had me over a barrel, it was clear that I had him by the shorthairs, too.

“My hearing is tomorrow at one P.M. That gives you a short window of time to do as I say. I want signed affidavits from the people who helped pinch Pete on that arrest. I know one of them is his supplier, J.D. I don’t know who the other guy is.”

I did know, of course—it was Marcus Mason, the notorious “Mace.” Joel Lightner had delivered me a rather voluminous file on that gentleman. But I didn’t need to share that with Smith.

“J.D., and the other guy,” I continued. “They will swear in their affidavits that Pete was only there to make a small purchase of powder cocaine. He wasn’t a drug dealer, and he wasn’t a gunrunner. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They will deliver those signed affidavits to the detective who arrested Pete, a guy by the name of Denny DePrizio. I think he works a regular day shift, so he shouldn’t be hard to find.”

He didn’t need to know that I had connected DePrizio with him. Maybe he’d figured it out already, but I wasn’t going to tell him. I needed to be as much of a question mark to him as he was to me.

“No chance,” Smith said.

“You have my brother,” I said. “And you’re not letting him go until the trial is over, if ever. You’ve got the leverage on me, Smith. You win. But if you really mean what you say about letting him go when this is over, and clearing him of the charges—well, then, you have to do part of that now. Clear the charges now, show me that you’re serious. And then I’ll drop that request for the DNA testing. If that hasn’t happened by one o’clock tomorrow, then I go forward with that motion.”

“No deal,” Smith said. He must have enjoyed that, throwing my oft-repeated line back at me.

“Then I have to assume you’re just going to kill Pete, anyway. I have nothing left to lose. That’s DePrizio, D-E-P-R-I-Z-I-O. He better have affidavits in his hand before my one o’clock hearing. You know me well enough to know I’m not bluffing, Smith.”

I hung up the phone and held my breath. I fought it as best I could, any thought of what might happen to Pete. I couldn’t rule out, much less control, anything they might do to Pete to make his stay with them less enjoyable. If I showed weakness, it would only get worse for him. They had to see me as a forceful adversary. It was the only way to get Pete back.

Unless, between now and the trial, I could figure out who killed Audrey Cutler.

I SAT ON MY BED, watching the clock approach midnight, pondering everything, using my abilities at cross-examination to punch holes in my plan. There were plenty of flaws, but I was satisfied that I was doing all I could do. The best thing I had going for me was the element of surprise. They didn’t know me. They thought they did. It would have to be enough.

Just after midnight—thirteen hours before my hearing on the DNA testing before the judge—I turned off the bedroom light, leaving my entire town house in darkness.

46

JUST PAST THREE in the morning, two men—two of Smith’s men—approached the town house from the rear. The front made no sense; it was too well-lit and on a fairly busy street. The rear, on the other hand, worked well for their purposes. The town house was backed up to an alley, a locked gate separating the alley from a small garden area consisting of a circular patio with the ubiquitous barbecue grill, table, and chairs.

The gate lock had to be picked, but that was not an overly difficult chore. Once past the lock, the two men slowly moved through the garden area toward the town house. One of the men, the bigger of the two, looked through the back-door window into the kitchen, searching for the house alarm. The alarm had a green light on it, meaning it was disarmed.

“It’s not armed,” he said to his partner. He readied his tension wrench and hooking pick to get through the back-door lock. “We spend all that time getting the combo to the alarm from his idiot brother and Kolarich doesn’t even set the damn thing.”

“Someone should tell these yuppies there’s crime in this city,” said the other, quietly.

“I’ll make a note of it,” I said, swinging my baseball bat at the bigger guy first, just as he’d turned, connecting square across the nose. The second guy was reaching for his weapon. I kicked out at his knee, the heel of my foot hitting the side of his kneecap, causing a painful buckling of his leg before he fell. Once he was on the ground, I used the butt of the baseball bat, two sharp blows into his face, knocking his head against the stone patio. The bigger guy hadn’t had time to recover—he was stunned, crumpled awkwardly on the two concrete stairs leading up to the back door, blood gushing from his nose. “Where’s my brother?” I asked him.

“Fuck . . . you,” he said through his hands.

I swung the bat with all my might, with all the rage that had festered, into his kneecap, then into his chest. I didn’t want to kill these guys, nor did I want retrograde amnesia. They needed to get word to Smith, with the one phone call they’d be allowed.

“Tell me where he is or I crush your skull.”

At that moment, a light went on in the town house next door. We were making enough noise to wake the neighbors. It didn’t look like I was going to get the answers I needed. I’d miscalculated, yet again. I should have let them come into my house and jumped them there, instead of huddling in the corner of my back patio awaiting them. My thought had been that I was safer outside, where I could run, I could yell for help, if these guys got the better of me. But if I’d chosen inside to make my move, I probably could have spent more time with them. I could have extracted the information I needed. Another mistake.

Figuring that my neighbors would be doing so shortly, I pulled out my cell phone and called 911, giving the dispatcher my address and telling them about two men trying to break into my house. Then I put the phone back in my pocket and surveyed my attackers.

They were suffering badly. The bigger guy’s nose was shattered and bleeding uncontrollably and the blow to his chest had left him struggling for air. The second guy was stunned from the blows to his face followed by the immediate contact with the patio, forming a one-two punch that left him unable to discern up from down, dark from light, such that he didn’t even seem to notice that his knee was dislocated.

I went back to the first guy. “Try again, Igor,” I said, poising the bat over my shoulder. “One last chance. Where’s my brother?”

“Your brother’s . . . gonna fucking die.” He managed something in the realm of a chuckle. I hit him across the chest with everything I had. He didn’t take it well.

“You, Einstein.” I stood over the second guy, who was barely conscious. “Where’s my brother?”

I’d hoped that his dazed state might serve as truth serum, but he was unable to respond. I tried a couple more times with the bigger guy, alternating my watch from one to the other—they were armed, after all, and I had to be sure they wouldn’t reach for their weapons. I decided not to disarm them because I wanted the cops to find them that way.

The bad thing about living in a nice neighborhood—normally a good thing—is that the cops come quickly. It was less than ten minutes later that two uniforms approached from the alley, coming through the same gate that Smith’s buddies had entered.

A flashlight shone on my face. I was holding up my driver’s license. “I’m the owner of the house,” I said. “I called you. My name is Jason Kolarich. These guys are armed,” I added, “but at the moment, not dangerous.”

The cops, guns drawn, were not in the mood for levity, but it didn’t take them long to get matters settled. My mentioning that I used to be an ACA, worked felony review out of Area Four, handled Judge Weiss’s courtroom, all that good stuff, helped them considerably. I was, after all, the owner of the house, and the two guys lying wounded and weary, with guns stuffed in their pants, looked like they’d come off the set of The Sopranos.

I’d figured that Smith’s final play before tomorrow’s court hearing would be to mess me up, or maybe even detain me briefly—anything to keep me from attending that hearing. It’s what I would have done, if I were them. But then, if I were them, I might have considered the possibility that my adversary might anticipate that very move, and might be lying in wait in the corner of his back patio with a baseball bat.

The goons were arrested on attempted aggravated burglary and suspicion of unlawful weapons charges. They were taken to the station house for processing and detention. I sat at the desk of a lieutenant and gave my statement. He gave me the names of my attackers and mentioned that each of them had encountered more than one brush with the law in the past, which suggested that their bond might be set pretty high when their arraignment came.

“These guys had handcuffs and rope,” the lieutenant told me. “Didn’t look like they were looking for a smash-and-grab. It looked more like a kidnapping, in fact.”

I expressed my utter shock at the possibility. “Why me?” I asked.

“I was going to ask you that.”

“Never heard of these guys, Lieutenant. Nino Ramsey and John Tunicci? I don’t have a clue.”

“You said you’re a criminal defense lawyer. You ever represent any organized crime?”

“No.”

“Okay. Okay.” The cop thought about that. “These guys, they’re nothing but a couple of thugs. Enforcer types. They freelance from time to time, but they usually run with the Capparelli family.”

He was talking about old-school mafia, Rico Capparelli’s crew. Rico, last I recalled, was serving out the rest of his life in a maximum-security federal pen. It stood out, more than anything, for the prosecutorial joke. The old man went down for federal racketeering charges—Rico was pinched on RICO.

Was I up against organized crime? It could mean so many different things nowadays, that phrase. As much as the feds had curtailed their influence, they hadn’t so much cured the world of crime as simply forced these scumbags to scatter into subgroups—less “organized,” maybe, but still criminals. It didn’t narrow my focus much at all.

But at least I had two of these guys out of the picture for a short time. I was confident now that I was up against a small band of people working for Smith—four people, to be exact. Two of them, presumably, had been baby-sitting Pete while the other two came for me. Now, for a time, at least, they had lost half their manpower.

When I left the police station, as the sun was rising, I drove to a hotel. I had several changes of clothes in the trunk of my car along with toiletries. I had no intention of going home, or going anywhere that Smith might expect me to go, until that court hearing at one o’clock today. Smith would not have another chance to come at me.

I knew I had to get some sleep. I knew it, but I couldn’t force it. I stretched out on the rickety bed and closed my eyes, trying to focus myself into calm. I woke with a start, the bedside clock telling me it was just past nine o’clock. I took a shower, dressed in my suit, reupped with the hotel for another night, and drove to the criminal courthouse, where I would present my motion in about three hours. I figured that Smith might make one last run at me, but he wouldn’t count on me showing up three hours early to court.

Once inside the courthouse and past the metal detectors, I called Joel Lightner and gave him the names of my would-be attackers, Nino Ramsey and John Tunicci. “Enforcers, I think,” I told him. “Apparently, they run with the Capparellis.”

“The Capparellis? What the hell have you gotten into, Jason?”

“I wish I knew. Anyway—they’re my best lead. My guess is, they’re freelancing for someone, I just don’t know who. Hoping my prized investigator can help me with that?”

“I’ll do my best,” Joel promised. “Hey, did you get in touch with Jimmy Stewart?”

“I think he prefers ‘Jim.’”

“That’s why I call him ‘Jimmy.’”

“Yeah, I met with him. He says you’re a drunk and a womanizer.”

“I’ll sue.”

“Truth is an absolute defense, Joel. Gotta run.”

“Say, Jason. Do you know what the hell you’re doing?”

I didn’t have an answer so I punched out.

I made my way up to the courtroom where my motion would be heard later today. The courtroom was empty. I walked around to the judge’s chambers and found her clerk in the anteroom. “Does the judge have any free time tomorrow?” I asked. “I might need to continue something I have up today.”

The judge had a few openings, though I didn’t take them, not yet. I loitered in the hallway for a few minutes, checking my watch.

At eleven-thirty, my cell phone rang.